The Smart One
by Basser
Summary: And this, Mycroft thinks, is why sitting vigil at his brother's bedside was a terrible idea. A conversation in the hospital. Missing scene from HLV.


**A/N: **_I really don't know. I was wondering about Mycroft's smoking habit and then this happened._

* * *

"Well, then, this is new."

A tired voice mumbling. Mycroft glances up from the intelligence report in his hand to find his little brother blinking groggily at him. A bemused half-smile indicates the boy's not entirely lucid, but... yes, definitely better than he's been the past several times he's drifted into consciousness. Perhaps he'll manage more than half a minute this go-round before passing out again.

"What's new?" Mycroft replies, tone thoroughly disinterested as he looks back to his papers. "I always visit you in hospital."

"Yes, but... generally when I'm unconscious." Sherlock blinks several times, apparently in an effort to wake himself up a bit. Mycroft leans back into his chair and politely sets his report aside.

"Well, you're generally far more pleasant company that way."

He raises a brow as Sherlock shoots him an offended, if extremely woozy, frown. Doesn't point out that Sherlock's been more or less comatose for the past day and a half. Massive blood loss from the torn internal stitches, his little jaunt out of hospital having nearly killed him. One doesn't wake immediately from a stopped heart.

After a second's bleary staring Sherlock closes his eyes and lets his head flop back into the pillows once more.

"Okay, no. I can't do the whole... sarcastic thing," he mutters, sounding exhausted and more than a tad drugged. "You'll have to come up with clever comebacks for me if you want a sniping match."

"Wouldn't be much of a contest, then, would it? I'd just make you lose."

Sherlock flips an indifferent hand. "I always lose anyway." Quite suddenly he smirks and opens his eyes again, smiling over at Mycroft like a child. "Oh! Except for the time with the stupid hat. I _destroyed _you, that was brilliant."

Mycroft sets his face in an irritable frown. "You strayed into irrelevant topics, that's hardly sporting."

"What would you know about sporting? You've never played a sport in your life." The distinct note of snide derision in his brother's tone very nearly makes Mycroft smile with relief - finally regaining a measure of lucidity, it seems. Perhaps he'll manage to get back to something approaching his normal state soon? Quite like for all this nonsense to be done with.

"You should sign up for a league somewhere, maybe. Football? You'd be awful at football," Sherlock continues airily, and with a flash of displeasure Mycroft nixes all thought of his brother becoming more coherent. Ah, no, never mind... he's just doing that thing where he comes off as rational without knowing what he's saying. How in hell the idiot manages that, Mycroft will never know.

Sherlock, annoyingly, carries on talking. "I'm fairly sure it counts as exercise if you manage not to trip over yourself. Or the ball. That'd be funny, you know, I'd watch it. Root for the other team while you trundle along..."

Mycroft sighs to himself and steeples his fingers to regard his semi-delirious baby brother.

"Is this going to be the entire conversation, then?" he asks blandly. "Attempts at actual discourse from me and drugged rambling from you?"

"Mycroft, I am on _so much _morphine right now," Sherlock informs him in a tone that would be quite serious if not for the drowsy slurring of speech near the middle. Mycroft is distinctly not impressed.

"Yes, I'm quite aware. You're at nearly twice the usual dosage, in fact, thanks to a mysteriously pre-existing opiate tolerance. How on earth did _that _develop, I wonder."

True to his usual nature, Sherlock responds to the undertone of stark disapproval in his sibling's tone with a delighted smile. Pleased with himself for whatever absurd reason. Then, also as true to his nature, he quite abruptly decides to change the topic.

"When did you start smoking?"

Mycroft goes still, frozen for a microsecond. Swiftly loosens up once again. Ah, blast, of course Sherlock would have noticed - Mycroft had just been outside for a cigarette not ten minutes ago. The scent must be clinging to his clothes. Bothersome.

He has absolutely no intention of discussing the matter of his nicotine habit with his drugged-up baby brother, and so casts about for an easy way to avoid doing so. What would be the least inconvenient course of action? Denial? Might work. Would probably be simple enough to convince him it's all in his head, perhaps, or a nurse...

"No, don't do that," Sherlock cuts in before Mycroft can say anything.

"Do what?"

"The... you're going to lie, or something. Invent an excuse to avoid talking. I'm _stoned, _Mycroft, not stupid."

Mycroft raises a brow dubiously. "Well, relatively speaking…"

"Right, yes, everyone's a goldfish. Whatever." Sherlock flips a hand again, this time seeming to gain a bit more strength with the motion. He gestures vaguely in the direction of his brother's lap. "There's a pack of fags in your trouser pocket, you moron. Even a goldfish could spot that. A _drugged_ goldfish." Pausing as if struck with some important thought, he quite abruptly gets distracted. "... hang on, can goldfish have morphine? Would it work with their... fish... brains, or-?"

Ignoring his brother's continued mumbling about fish, Mycroft glances down and realises with a flash of irritated embarrassment that there is, indeed, a rather obvious rectangular shape protruding from his trouser pocket. He'd not remembered to return the pack to his suit coat, which is currently hanging off the back of his chair. He does so now with a vaguely childish huff; miffed at being caught out. Luckily Sherlock doesn't spot this, as he still appears to be lost in the tangent of how best to drug aquatic wildlife. Small mercies.

"Did you start while I was away?" Sherlock suddenly asks, and Mycroft looks back to the bed to find his baby brother smirking at him. Evidently the boy's decided to abandon his fish-based ponderations in favour of needling his sibling again. How on earth does a human being survive with such a fickle attention span, honestly. "Oh, I am _so_ sorry, Myc," he continues in a tone of mock-remorse. "I didn't realise how traumatising my absence would be for y-"

"Shut up. You're not being funny."

Sherlock snickers. "Yes I am."

Mycroft leans back into his chair with a sigh, arms crossed, unimpressed. Sherlock just keeps grinning at him. Good _lord_, but Mycroft despises dealing with his brother intoxicated. Always so bloody unpredictable.

Unconsciously he shifts his arm, remembering the ache of a sprained wrist. Sherlock doesn't seem to catch the movement.

"I picked up the habit several years back, if you must know," he finally answers. "Frankly I'm surprised it took you this long to notice."

"Oh, I noticed ages ago. It just seemed..." Sherlock trails off, flapping a hand in vague indication of his meaning, which he's apparently having trouble verbalising. "Too... hypocritical? Thought you were just trying to make a point."

"What point could I possibly make by taking up smoking?" Mycroft counters with a roll of his eyes.

"No, by... pretending to, I mean. Thought you wanted me to get cross over it. Then your always lecturing me about the drugs would be... erm, you know. You'd have made your point. Never did, though, so now it's just... oddly nonsensical. You about had a bloody fit the first time you caught me smoking. Why the change in opinion?"

Mycroft raises a brow. "You were _fifteen_ when I caught you smoking."

"I don't see why that matters." Sherlock doesn't seem to be making a statement by that - by his tone of voice he genuinely doesn't understand the point of bringing up his age. Mycroft isn't sure if that's down to the morphine or if the moron would be just as bewildered whilst sober. Probably the latter.

"When one's teenaged baby brother turns out to have been surreptitiously indulging a self-destructive vice for the past year and a half one tends to react poorly," Mycroft explains in a bland monotone. His brother just frowns at him.

"You threw my cigs in the duck pond." For some deranged reason his expression's gone rather comically despondent - as if he's somehow still upset over an event nearly two decades past. Mycroft breathes an exasperated sigh.

"I'm sorry for throwing your cigarettes in the duck pond," he drones in utter sarcasm. Sherlock, for whatever reason, seems marginally appeased by this. Mycroft just rolls his eyes again. "Did you have an actual objective in broaching this topic or are we just meandering along whatever tangents your drug-addled brain happens to stumble into?"

"Why'd you start?"

"Start smoking?" Mycroft asks - doesn't really need the clarification, of course, but he'd responded on impulse. Sherlock's expression makes it clear he's not about to bother dignifying that inanity with a response. They both know what was meant, even with one of them off his face on morphine.

A short silence stretches by as Mycroft debates on what to say. The truthful answer is... well, admittedly a bit embarrassing. And something he'd much rather not discuss, especially not with his drugged little brother. Has to be a way out of it...

Ah, finally he hits upon the easier path. Deflection.

"Why did _you _start?"

There, see how _Sherlock _likes it. Being asked deeply uncomfortable personal questions without so much as a by-your-leave. Bloody annoying little-

Unfortunately Mycroft's forgotten just how impressively stoned his brother is. All the boy's normal reservations about admitting emotional vulnerability seem to have been obliterated by the tide of morphine, making his response both immediate and uncharacteristically frank.

"Because I was lonely and miserable and cigarettes were the only way to make my brain shut up for five seconds. You?"

"I..." Mycroft sets his jaw, looks elsewhere. He's _not _going to voice the real reason. Best just play the evasion game, then, diffuse the conversation with sarcasm until Sherlock gets bored enough to drop the topic. "Well, I don't know," he drones easily. "It was just something to do."

Sherlock snorts in amusement. "Oh, right... you were scared, weren't you?"

"I don't get _scared_." Mycroft punctuates this with a frigid frown. He's above all that human weakness, thank you very much.

Sherlock just makes a dismissive noise.

"You get scared all the time. You can't even handle a bit of blood without being ill."

"That's not because of fear, it's because blood is disgusting and-"

"- and you're scared of it."

"I am _not _scared of-"

"Vomit as well."

Mycroft huffs, aggravated, and Sherlock smirks in that self-satisfied little way he does when he thinks he's won. After a tense _(well, tense on Mycroft's part - Sherlock's just sort of smiling blithely, bloody morphine) _few seconds of standoff Mycroft finally uncrosses his arms and sighs, rubbing a hand down his face in a sudden spike of weariness.

"I was... _worried_," he admits, and hates himself for it. "About... a great many things, at the time. The anxiety was becoming a distraction. You've always insisted that nicotine had its uses - able to quiet the... oh, whatever ridiculous metaphor you used to describe the sensation-"

"Like a rocket tearing itself to pieces," Sherlock supplies cheerfully. _Far_ too cheerfully for the subject matter at hand, Mycroft thinks, but then it's easier to just ignore it.

"Right, well... evidently you were on to something."

Sherlock abruptly grins. "_I _made you start smoking? Peer pressure? Really? From your little brother? That's hilarious."

"It was an _experiment_," Mycroft snaps back, glaring. "One that happened to prove successful."

"Was it really? You know what else was an experiment..." Sherlock starts slyly, but Mycroft cuts him off.

"Don't even start. This is not remotely on the same level of idiocy as your love affair with cocaine."

Sherlock just quirks a smug smile in response. A beat later though his expression goes a bit more serious. A _bit _more - he still looks rather hazy and bemused overall. Clearly not quite all there. Mycroft finds himself hoping fervently the boy's brain will have deleted this entire conversation by morning.

"But you do see, then, don't you?" Sherlock asks, now staring him down. "Why I do it?"

"I... _understand_, perhaps, the motivation," Mycroft trails off, glancing elsewhere, then looks back up to meet Sherlock's eyes. Hopefully his expression's doing a fair job of conveying the gravity of the topic. Not that his brother's in any fit state to take things seriously, but still. "That doesn't mean you should be allowed free reign to destroy yourself, however. If nothing else I've learnt why I need to keep this-" He gestures toward the IV, the morphine drip hooked up to it. "- away from you at all costs."

"Well you've not done a very good job _there_," Sherlock points out mockingly. Or as mocking as he can get whilst evidently amused by everything. Mycroft fixes him with a level stare regardless, unenthused.

"Yes, well... hence the smoking."

Sherlock actually has the good sense to look slightly apologetic. Slightly.

"I never asked you to worry about me," he mutters. With a small wince he shifts position a bit, leans back on his pillow and blinks a few times, screwing his face up as if fighting to stay awake. With any luck the boy will pass out soon and end this whole moronic chat for good.

"And I never wanted to. Yet here we are, Brother Dear." Mycroft gestures to the room around them. "You've taken a bullet to the gut and in response I'm illogically compelled to sit by your bedside as if my presence will confer any measure of benefit whatsoever."

"Sort've does, I guess. You're not boring."

"High praise, I'm sure," Mycroft offers blandly. He sighs to himself as Sherlock's eyes seem to begin losing focus. "Go back to sleep. You've technically died twice in the past fortnight, I've no desire to witness a third."

"How is just being awake going t'kill me? Th's stupid," Sherlock mumbles, slurring near the end. Despite a faint glare in Mycroft's direction he quickly loses the battle to keep his eyes open. A second later he finally goes limp, one arm draped over his stomach and head lolled to the side. Passed out cold.

Mycroft raises a brow as he settles back into his chair. Well, then, that had almost been a record - nearly five minutes this time. At this rate he'll be fully lucid by Christmas.

With a shake of his head Mycroft reaches over for his intelligence report, jostling his coat as he does so. He feels the weight of his lighter and cigarette pack shift and finds himself contemplating having another. After a conversation like _that... _he even goes so far as to reach back for them.

But Sherlock's self-satisfied mockery abruptly drifts through his mind. _Hypocrite. _

He drops his hand. No, no… doesn't need more nicotine. Not for hours yet. He's above such petty nonsense as chain-smoking. Sherlock's the one who lets his bad habits get the better of him, isn't he? Falls prey to the thoughtless trap of addiction. Not _Mycroft_ - he has far more self-control than that. He's the _smart _one.

Huffing a quiet breath to himself he snaps his report back open. The phantom scent of stale tobacco drifts up from his sleeve, seeped into the fabric where he'd let the smoke coil around his arm.

With a steadfast set to his jaw he ignores it.


End file.
